Why "New Labour" needs to be kicked out ASAP links
The case of the ludicrous over-reaction by officials of Britain’s “surveillance state” when a mother applied to get her daughter into a primary school has become some of a cause celebre:
But the intrusions visited on Jenny Paton, a 40-year-old mother of three, were startling just the same. Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the neighborhood school, local officials here began a covert surveillance operation. They obtained her telephone billing records. And for more than three weeks in 2008, an officer from the Poole education department secretly followed her, noting on a log the movements of the “female and three children” and the “target vehicle” (that would be Ms. Paton, her daughters and their car).
It turned out that Ms. Paton had broken no rules. Her daughter was admitted to the school. But she has not let the matter rest. Her case, now scheduled to be heard by a regulatory tribunal, has become emblematic of the struggle between personal privacy and the ever more powerful state here.
Massive complaints about a new UK court which seizes the assets of those suffering dementia:
The court hears about 23,000 cases a year - always in private - involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets. …
The Government now says everyone should establish a lasting power of attorney to state who should look after their affairs should they become incapacitated - although most people will be utterly unaware of this advice.
Arguing that the after effects of moral relativism help the BNP:
There seems to be no middle ground between an absurd relativism and a shouty, strident nastiness. This poses a problem: the chattering classes stop chattering as soon as a culturally sensitive topic comes up.
Poll finds that up to one-fifth of the British electorate would consider voting for the BNP. Noting that the trashing of the UKIP as “fascist” is now followed by rising support for a genuine fascist party. About the massive over-use of the charge of “racist!”
By smearing as racist everyone concerned with illegal immigration and the overboard tolerance for radical Islam, the British left is desensitizing everyone to the legitimate charge when it is directed at the BNP. People think, “Well, I’m concerned about illegal immigration, Islamists, the white poor, etc., and I’m not a racist so maybe the BNP isn’t either.” The overuse of the left’s catch-all denunciation deprives it of meaning and force. People may simply stop listening to the left’s warnings because they’ve so many times labeled people with legitimate concerns as racist. By their own narcissism, self-righteousness and contempt, the left is actively driving people to fascist solutions just as their more radical ideological ancestors did back in the 1920s.
Worse, entire generations of Britons have been conditioned to believe that the state has a moral obligation to care for them cradle-to-grave. It is a short step from there to the belief that the government has a moral obligation to care for native Britons first and foremost before all others. …
If a liberal order cannot provide economic and physical security, a population conditioned to see state power as the solution to all problems can slide into authoritarianism almost overnight.
Immigration policy being used as a domestic political ploy with policies that lacked popular support. More on the controversy over a Labour insider’s comments on immigration policy.
Apparently the UK NHS does not actually run to rehab for stroke victims
Bizarrely, I owe my recovery to my mother-in-law. Her husband had received almost no help when, in 2003, he had suffered a stroke in his seventies. So she had gone on the internet - as one does at 74 - and found that major strides had been made in America in treating stroke victims. Research there showed that damaged neural pathways could be re-routed, and that a diminished signal could be sent through the outer lining of an otherwise dead nerve. The key was speed. After three or four weeks, the brain seemed to start a permanent shut-down on these pathways.
So my mother-in-law invented a rehab programme, …
The difference between success and failure was also the unfailing support of my wife, my three children and my employer - and a deep anger that I was not offered more help to start with. I am haunted still, three years on, by the thought of all the people who are not told that a stroke is not a death-knell, nor the end to a career or normal life. Sadly, not everyone has a mother-in-law like mine.
But the intrusions visited on Jenny Paton, a 40-year-old mother of three, were startling just the same. Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the neighborhood school, local officials here began a covert surveillance operation. They obtained her telephone billing records. And for more than three weeks in 2008, an officer from the Poole education department secretly followed her, noting on a log the movements of the “female and three children” and the “target vehicle” (that would be Ms. Paton, her daughters and their car).
It turned out that Ms. Paton had broken no rules. Her daughter was admitted to the school. But she has not let the matter rest. Her case, now scheduled to be heard by a regulatory tribunal, has become emblematic of the struggle between personal privacy and the ever more powerful state here.
Massive complaints about a new UK court which seizes the assets of those suffering dementia:
The court hears about 23,000 cases a year - always in private - involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets. …
The Government now says everyone should establish a lasting power of attorney to state who should look after their affairs should they become incapacitated - although most people will be utterly unaware of this advice.
Arguing that the after effects of moral relativism help the BNP:
There seems to be no middle ground between an absurd relativism and a shouty, strident nastiness. This poses a problem: the chattering classes stop chattering as soon as a culturally sensitive topic comes up.
Poll finds that up to one-fifth of the British electorate would consider voting for the BNP. Noting that the trashing of the UKIP as “fascist” is now followed by rising support for a genuine fascist party. About the massive over-use of the charge of “racist!”
By smearing as racist everyone concerned with illegal immigration and the overboard tolerance for radical Islam, the British left is desensitizing everyone to the legitimate charge when it is directed at the BNP. People think, “Well, I’m concerned about illegal immigration, Islamists, the white poor, etc., and I’m not a racist so maybe the BNP isn’t either.” The overuse of the left’s catch-all denunciation deprives it of meaning and force. People may simply stop listening to the left’s warnings because they’ve so many times labeled people with legitimate concerns as racist. By their own narcissism, self-righteousness and contempt, the left is actively driving people to fascist solutions just as their more radical ideological ancestors did back in the 1920s.
Worse, entire generations of Britons have been conditioned to believe that the state has a moral obligation to care for them cradle-to-grave. It is a short step from there to the belief that the government has a moral obligation to care for native Britons first and foremost before all others. …
If a liberal order cannot provide economic and physical security, a population conditioned to see state power as the solution to all problems can slide into authoritarianism almost overnight.
Immigration policy being used as a domestic political ploy with policies that lacked popular support. More on the controversy over a Labour insider’s comments on immigration policy.
Apparently the UK NHS does not actually run to rehab for stroke victims
Bizarrely, I owe my recovery to my mother-in-law. Her husband had received almost no help when, in 2003, he had suffered a stroke in his seventies. So she had gone on the internet - as one does at 74 - and found that major strides had been made in America in treating stroke victims. Research there showed that damaged neural pathways could be re-routed, and that a diminished signal could be sent through the outer lining of an otherwise dead nerve. The key was speed. After three or four weeks, the brain seemed to start a permanent shut-down on these pathways.
So my mother-in-law invented a rehab programme, …
The difference between success and failure was also the unfailing support of my wife, my three children and my employer - and a deep anger that I was not offered more help to start with. I am haunted still, three years on, by the thought of all the people who are not told that a stroke is not a death-knell, nor the end to a career or normal life. Sadly, not everyone has a mother-in-law like mine.